Hezbollah says two fighters killed in Israeli strike

Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement said an Israeli air strike on Sunday killed two fighters from the Iran-backed group, with the health ministry reporting another death from an attack days ago.

Hezbollah has traded near-daily fire with Israel in support of its ally Hamas since October.

Tensions have skyrocketed since a strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs late last month killed Hezbollah’s top military commander, Fuad Shukr, just hours before the assassination, blamed on Israel, of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

An “Israeli strike that targeted the village of Taybeh today left two dead,” the Lebanese health ministry said in a statement.

Hezbollah confirmed they were group fighters, killed in Taybeh near the border with Israel.

The official National News Agency reported that “a drone fired two missiles on the village of Taybeh.”

The Israeli military said it had “struck throughout the day several Hezbollah military structures in the area of Adaisseh,” which is located next to Taybeh.

In another statement later on Sunday the military said its forces had “struck a Hezbollah terrorist cell in the area of Taybeh” as well as “a military structure in the area of Derdghaiya.”

“Following the strike, secondary explosions were identified, indicating the presence of weapons inside the structure” in Derdghaiya, it added.

A union of local governments in the area said at least three Syrians were killed in an Israeli strike on Derdghaiya. The Lebanese health ministry gave a different toll, saying two Syrians were killed and several others including a Lebanese wounded.

Separately, the health ministry specified that a Lebanese man who had succumbed to injuries sustained in an Israeli strike “several days ago” on the southern village of Beit Lif was a Hezbollah fighter, not a civilian as earlier reported.

Hezbollah claimed several attacks against military positions in northern Israel on Sunday, including at least two using attack drones.

On Saturday, the Iran-backed group said it had launched “squadrons of explosive-laden drones” at a north Israel army base following the killing of a Hamas commander in the south Lebanon city of Sidon a day earlier.

The cross-border violence since early October has killed at least 565 people in Lebanon, most of them fighters but also including at least 116 civilians, according to the AFP tally.

On the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, 22 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed, according to army figures.

Thousands have been displaced from both sides of the border due to the fighting.